Utah football notebook: Utes doing all right in turnover department

PASADENA, Calif. — When it comes to takeaways by Utah's defense, there's good news and bad.

"We have done a good job of creating fumbles," said head coach Kyle Whittingham. "We have not done a good job intercepting the ball."

The Utes enter Saturday's game at UCLA as the national leader in forced fumbles with 13 (recovering six). As for interceptions, they have only two. Whittingham called the latter "ridiculous" and noted that things have got to get better in the secondary.

Conversely, Whittingham is relatively pleased that the Utes have lost the ball only seven times (four fumbles, three interceptions).

"I think we've done a nice job overall," he said. "We have not had excessive turnovers at all and so we need to continue that trend."

STAR GAZER: UCLA coach Jim Mora is a big fan of Utah defensive tackle Star Lotulelei. He told reporters this week that the senior is "a great one" and one of the best he's seen.

"He's something special," Mora said. "I'm looking forward to watching him, but hopefully we do a good job against him."